2017 STEM Talks

Thank you to all of our wonderful past speakers! Thank you to the American Society for Cell Biology and Sharon Education Foundation for funding our STEM Talks in 2017!

Dr. Scott Shikora (BWH/Harvard Medical School)

​Scott Shikora, MD, FACS attended medical school at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and completed his surgical residency and Nutrition Support fellowship at New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston. He then spent the next four years as a major and a staff surgeon in the United States Air Force. He is a member of several medical societies and was active in leadership in the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition where he is a Past President and former board member and the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery where he was both a Past President and a former Executive Council member. Dr. Shikora has authored numerous book chapters and journal publications and has made hundreds of presentations internationally on bariatric surgery and nutrition support topics. He also developed and directs the Bariatric Summit and World Congress for the Advancement of Surgery, in Israel conferences.

Dr. Afreen Siddiqi (MIT)

​Dr. Afreen Siddiqi is a Research Scientist in the Engineering Systems Division of MIT. She has an S.B. in Mechanical Engineering, S.M. in Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Systems, all from MIT. Over the last several years, she has worked with public and private institutions in the US and abroad on modeling, design and optimization of complex socio-technical systems.

Dr. Zvonimir Dogic (Brandeis University)

The research interests of Zvonimir Dogic and his group lie in elucidating rules that govern self-assembly of materials, with a particular emphasis being placed on the role the particle's shape and chirality play in these assembly processes. They strive to create very simple model systems in which precise control is possible over all the relevant parameters. This enables a rigorous and detailed comparison with theoretical predictions. The particles they use have very simple hard core repulsive interactions. Despite the apparent simplicity of these building blocks, they have demonstrated that through a careful choice of particle shape and chirality it is possible to assemble at least half a dozen unique structures. By necessity the research is highly interdisciplinary. To accomplish goals, in addition to a host of experimental techniques, they also utilize theoretical statistical mechanics, computer simulations, biochemistry, various protein purification techniques and molecular cloning.

Dr. Karim Sharif (Massassoit Community College)

Dr. Karim A. Sharif received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the Hunter College of the City of New York. Subsequently, he obtained his Ph.D. degree from the City University of New York. His doctorate research involved understanding the function of the enzyme RNA polymerase in the process of transcription in bacteria. He established a collaboration with Dr. Akira Ishihama and spent 4 months to carry out his research project in Japan. After completing his doctorate, he joined the Comprehensive Cancer Center of the Albert-Einstein College of Medicine as a post-doctoral fellow, where he studied the transport of chemotherapeutic drugs in human breast cancer cells. In doing so, Dr. Sharif introduced a new technique to study drug transport in adherent cells. Dr. Sharif then joined the Weill Cornell Medical College, New York as a research scientist, where he performed cancer and neurobiology research using transgenic mice. Dr. Sharif accepted a position of Assistant Professor of Biology in the LaGuardia Community College, New York in 2007. Currently Dr. Sharif is an Associate Professor of Biology at the Massasoit Community College, Brockton, MA. His current research interests involve comparative genomic analysis among Drosophila (fruit fly) species. He has authored several scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Shawnna Buttery (Editor, Cell Press)

Following a scientific article from the newspaper to the lab bench.
I plan to walk audience members through the life of a news article from the science section. We will start at the news source and talk about the science as written for a broad audience and talk about the role of the science writer. Then, we will look at the same story in the form published in the scientific journal and discuss the role of a scientific editor. Then, I will briefly discuss the story of the work from the perspective of the scientists working at the lab bench. The talk will highlight several different aspects of scientific publishing and communication.
Bio:
Shawnna Buttery, PhD
Shawnna (@yeastgrrl) joined the Cell Reports team as a Scientific Editor in August 2016. She previously worked for Elsevier's BBA journals. Her training in the laboratory was in cell biology, studying the cytoskeleton in worm sperm as a grad student at FSU and in budding yeast as a postdoc at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. You can learn more about her view on science on her personal blog Science Types.

Dr. Julian Tyson (UMass Amherst)

Julian Tyson, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, received his B.S. in Chemistry from Aberdeen University in Scotland in 1971, and his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Imperial College, London University in England in 1975. Over the 40 years of his research career, his group has developed new methods for the measurement of potential harmful compounds of arsenic, antimony, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, and selenium in a variety of environmental and biological materials, including waters, soils, plants, dietary supplements and a number of foodstuffs. His current interests are focused on the challenges of measuring arsenic compounds in rice. Since the fall of 2014, he has been associated with the work of Chemists Without Borders, for whom he is currently the manager of the Arsenic-in-Rice project.
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In his talk, Professor Tyson explained why we should be concerned about the arsenic compounds, some of which are known to cause cancer, in the rice we are eating and what the challenges are for the analytical chemist in devising methods to measure these compounds reliably. He will demonstrate the procedure that undergraduates (and some high school students) are developing in his lab for use at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh.

Dr. Brian Synder (Harvard Medical School)

Val Boutin and Laura Moreno ​(National Fire Protection Association)

Mikael Garabedian ​(Bruce Goode's lab, Brandeis University)

Mikael Garabedian earned his undergraduate degree in Biology at Drexel University. He then spent two years as a researcher at Fox Chase Cancer Center before attending Brandeis University to earn a Ph.D in Molecular and Cell Biology. He is currently a graduate student in Bruce Goode's lab where he works on understanding mechanisms of actin assembly, which drives many important cellular processes from cell division to migration. Mikael's research involves purifying and studying protein activities outside of cells as well as directly observing activities using a variety of different imaging techniques inside of cells. In his STEM Talk, Mikael shared his research with the group and taught us about the cell biology of the cytoskeleton and microscopy.

Dr. Ken Olum (Tufts University)

Dr. Olum is a research professor in the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University. He studies cosmic strings, general relativity, and philosophical reasoning applied to cosmology. He is currently computing the spectrum of gravitational waves to be expected from a cosmic string network for comparison with future observations. He lives in Sharon.
Dr. Olum will discuss what gravitational waves are, where they come from, and
what they tell us now and might tell us in the future, as we begin the
new era of gravitational wave astronomy.

**The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the observation of gravitational waves shortly after Dr. Olum's Sharon STEM Talk on this exact topic**

Kerri Byrne (Catalano Architects)

Kerri Byrne has over 10 years experience in residential architecture and design, with work in the Boston suburbs and on Cape Cod. As a LEED Accredited Professional, she works with clients to achieve an energy efficient home that uses sustainable, local materials through green building practices. The end result is a custom home that responds to the individual characteristics of each site, keeping in mind the scale of structures, regional architectural cues, and the surrounding natural landscape.